As we report here, Lockheed Martin and Boeing announced on Friday that they are teaming on the USAF's Next Generation Bomber (NGB) program, aimed at delivering a stealthy bomber by 2018. There's a lot to be read into that teaming arrangement, which has been active for at least a year.
The team is apparently located in St Louis and - from Skunk Works leader Frank Cappuccio's admission that Lockheed Martin had a "credential issue" in a bomber program - it appears that Boeing is the leader. That makes sense, because for the USAF to award a third major program to a Lockheed Martin-led team (after the F-22 and F-35) would be a signal to others to get out of the business. And I doubt that anyone in St Louis is ever going to get involved in a program without a clear leader, ever again. The A-12 disaster was a long time ago, but still...
The work in the next 18-24 months will be company-funded, a statement important for its negative implication: it says that Boeing-Lockheed Martin are not now, and don't expect to be, getting any government money (white or black) for NGB. But the funding profiles suggest strongly, as reported here, that someone is getting that money. The revelation that it's neither Boeing nor Lockheed Martin, shall we say, usefully narrows the field of candidates.
The new team leaders also went out of their way to pooh-pooh the relevance of a demonstrator; which would make perfect sense if their rival was working on one. Cappuccio also noted that "a question of openness" weighed against a LockMart/NorthGrum link-up - and there would certainly be such a question if Northrop Grumman were working on a black-world demonstrator.
The propaganda war has already started. Analyst Loren Thompson, quoted in Defense News, says that the new team will be "hard to beat" because "Boeing has built almost every bomber the Air Force has used for the last 60 years" and "Northrop has been edging out of the airframe integration business for a generation."
This is another of those statements that can only go unquestioned in Washington DC. The last B-52 rolled out when Kennedy was in the White House, and the Rockwell (now Boeing) team that built the B-1 was dispersed years ago. The most active bomber development team today is the Northrop Grumman B-2 organization.
As for "edging out of the airplane integration business", Northrop Grumman has Global Hawk and Fire Scout, handed Boeing its head in the UCAS-N contest, and has just bought the world's most creative airplane prototype shop. And if one wanted to be unnecessary, as Dame Edna would put it, one could ask when a St Louis original design last won anything (clue).
As Charlie Brown once said after another pounding by Lucy, "I'm going to have to get out of this habit of talking without thinking."
The Great Pumpkin then flies through the air to deliver toys to all the good little children in the world. Apparently, one can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass him or her by merely saying "IF he comes", as opposed to "WHEN he comes". This could mean that the Great Pumpkin is likely to pass by anyone who doubts his existence.
Not to be sexist, but I hope the bomber program manager is a woman. Consider this:
Sally, is usually the one person who Linus convinces to sit in the pumpkin patch. Sally's number of Halloweens spent in the pumpkin patch, in fact, are surpassed only by Linus's. Sally's belief in the Great Pumpkin is quashed every year she waits in the pumpkin patch, yet the next time, presumably out of love for Linus, she believes in the Great Pumpkin just as strongly.
Peppermint Patty had been depicted at least once waiting in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin. She says she does so because she is very superstitious, as well as trusting, and, as she admits, a little bit stupid.
Marcie had sat with Linus in the Pumpkin patch on at least one occasion, and generally shows belief in the Great Pumpkin, albeit usually calling it the "Great Squash" or the "Great Grape".
While I loved all those Charlie Brown TV specials as a kid, I think in the current funding environment, hopes of seen a new next generation bomber are about on the same odds as waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Somehow I don't see the Obama/Winfrey elects as tolerating funding such things when the U.S. is billions in debt.